For this week, our team took the feedback we received from our quarter walk around and sit downs from the ETC faculty and our client as well as the results from our playtests from companies that visited our project room to define a clearer plan for our project.
We were able to define our experience as a first person perspective exploration experience in a customizable space station! Our team met together to make strides in the design which allowed us to kick off production this week – allowing the art and sound assets to start generating for the following week.
Additionally, our team was able to host two company visits to our project room: Sky Limit Entertainment and Electronic Arts! We also had a visit from art director, Kevin Lee Allen which provided us insight into a great direction for a cohesive look and feel for our future experience.
Check out Simtopia’s current prototype here: Link to Simtopia’s Week 6 Prototype Video.
The Simtopia team conducted an interview with the designer of the previous ETC project, Blueprint, (that also had Electronic Arts as their client), to gain a better understanding of their user interactions and design. It was quite interesting to try out all three of their prototypes as it provided a unique experience to each one!
Art director, Kevin Lee Allen, visited Simtopia and tested out the current prototype. With his focus in entertainment design and production, Simtopia was able to receive great insight on how to create a cohesive art style for their future space station experience.
Hosting Electronic Arts was an absolute treat for Simtopia! It was wonderful to have the parent company of our client project to test out our current prototype and give us feedback. It was super cool to see how they expressed their player creativity and moved around the space.
Lastly, here are some pipeline updates that were completed for the week from the Simtopia team:
- Design:
- Games research
- Concept research
- UI research
- Simtopia’s creature design
- Design documentation and summaries
- Base concept for an art style
- User stories and design hints
- Art:
- Modules and connector models were created for the environment
- Environment and character artist worked together on a cohesive art style guide and mood board to set tone for the experience which they ran by their faculty advisor
- Began concept phase for the creatures
- Programming:
- Implemented and tested the preview function
- Implemented and tested the collision detection function
- Imported rough modules into the program
- Built the updated version of the prototype and created a demo video
See you next week as we continue to develop our art and sound assets to gear up for our halves presentation in two weeks where we plan on showcasing a working demo of our prototype!